OECD gender progress stalls as UK faces female NEET crisis, PwC warns
LONDON, ENGLAND — A new report says progress on gender equality at work across Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries continued in 2024, but at its slowest pace since COVID, as female unemployment rose and full-time work fell.
In the United Kingdom, PwC’s Women in Work 2026 report found only modest gains overall, with young women facing a sharp rise in unemployment and a growing risk of becoming not in education, employment, or training, or NEET.
OECD gender equality progress slows post-COVID
PwC, through its UK Public Sector Strategy & Economics division, indicated that its report monitored the outcomes of women in the labor market across 33 OECD nations using five indicators, including:
- Gender pay gap
- Participation rate gap
- Female participation
- Female full-time employment
- Female unemployment
The report shows that the gender gap was once again reduced in 2024, when more women joined or returned to the labor market, mostly due to pressure on the cost of living, and the gender pay gap narrowed further.
But the report said the labor market did not absorb those entrants fast enough. According to PwC, a 0.4 percentage-point increase in female labor participation in the OECD was accompanied by a 0.2 percentage-point increase in female unemployment.
Additionally, women’s full-time work dropped to its lowest level in the index’s history, highlighting weaker labor demand amid slower economic growth.
The average OECD country improved its index score by 0.6 points in 2024, half the rate of the long-term trend and the weakest improvement since the pandemic. The G7 countries were even worse off, with their average score dropping by 0.3 points, as stricter monetary policies and reduced job-creation opportunities took a toll on women’s employment.
Iceland was once again number one, followed by Luxembourg, New Zealand, Sweden, and Slovenia, and the UK was ranked 17th out of 33 countries.
PwC added that the highest performers have good parental leave and childcare in place that enable women to continue working and advance, and cited high levels of childcare uptake and long-term policy support in the countries mentioned.
UK labor market strains: Rising female unemployment
In the UK, the report found that the gender wage gap had been narrowing, but at a slow pace. This narrowing gender gap masked a worsening jobs picture for women, which is closely linked to the government’s planned overhaul of gender pay gap reporting rules.
By requiring employers to calculate pay gaps based on biological sex, the new guidance would change how disparities are officially measured and presented, thereby shaping how employers address them.
The UK’s overall Women in Work index score rose by just 0.16 points in 2024, well below the OECD average increase of 0.42 points, even as the gender pay gap edged down to 13.1% and the participation rate gap narrowed sharply.
Unemployment was the largest setback. PwC reported that the female unemployment rate in the UK increased from 3.5% to 4.2% in 2024, the highest rate of increase since the index was launched in 2011, and that the rise was disproportionately concentrated among young women, whose unemployment rate increased from 9.5% to 11.8%.
Recently, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revised its unemployment projections, which now peak at 5.3% this year, and stressed that youth are particularly affected.
Carol Stubbings, UK and EMEA Managing Partner at PwC, notes, “Rising female unemployment, especially among young women, points to underlying weaknesses in our labour market at a time when AI is reshaping the economy and the skills needed.”
The report also indicated that the UK was still performing poorly in terms of women’s full-time employment. The UK had a rate of 67.7% full-time employment among women, which was 9.1 percentage points below the 76.8% average of OECD countries in 2024, placing the country in 27th position out of 33, and supporting fears of slower progression and lower remuneration for part-time working women.
The regional inequalities remained acute, though the gap between the best- and worst-performing regions had narrowed.
The South West led the regional ranking after a 5.2-point increase in its score, while Scotland and Northern Ireland remained near the top, helped in part by relatively high levels of public-sector employment; London fell to the bottom, reflecting the UK’s highest female unemployment rate at 5.2% and a 14.8% gender pay gap linked to its sector mix.
The growing NEET crisis among young UK women
A special section of the report focused on the UK’s rising NEET challenge among under-25s, especially young women. PwC said that more than 946,000 people aged 16 to 24 were classified as NEET, equal to 12.7% of the UK’s youth population, and that about 46% of that group were young women.
PwC’s econometric analysis found that the main drivers of NEET risk differ by gender. For young women, poor educational attainment was the stronger factor, with a 24.5% likelihood of being NEET for those with low attainment, compared with 20.0% for those with a health condition.
For young men, health was the stronger factor, with a 23.6% likelihood, compared with 19.4% with low attainment.
The report said the disadvantage becomes far more severe when risks overlap. Young women with both poor GCSE attainment and a health condition were 48.0% likely to be NEET, nearly four times the 12.2% rate for the average young woman. At the same time, combinations involving ethnic minority background also roughly doubled the risk.
PwC said the economic case for action is significant. The increase in the young female NEET rate to 2021 levels would add approximately £3 billion (US$4 billion) to UK GDP, while the rate could be increased to levels comparable to Germany’s, approximately £5 billion (US$6.6 billion), and the Netherlands’, approximately 11 billion (US$14.7 billion).
The report said reform must ensure that young women benefit from vocational expansion and AI-related skills development, particularly as women are more likely to be in AI-exposed jobs and less likely than men to use AI at work.
Alia Qamar, Senior Economist at PwC UK, notes, “The rise in young women becoming NEET, often driven by the intersection of health and educational barriers, mirrors wider pressures on women’s employment across the OECD. Crucially, the analysis shows these risks don’t just add up, they compound.”
Unless addressed, today’s setback for young women could become tomorrow’s structural divide in the global labor market.
